Max’s Folly

Synopsis

Max, a journalist who has sustained a long career by using his wits, is confronted with a succession of devastating losses: his job, the death of his wife and —so he’s been told — his memory. But Max knows there’s nothing wrong with his memory. He’s a lifelong time-traveller and his supposed memory lapses are actually bad “jumps”. When it seems he is about to lose his freedom to an assisted living home, Max decides on one last journey — a search in time-past for his late wife.

Readers’ Comments and Where to Buy are below. A link to the EXCERPT is at the bottom, or, JUMP to it now.

Where to Buy

Available at many local bookstores, but call first. Online, you can order in trade paperback and e-book formats:

Readers’ Comments

“I loved it. I finished it in one day. It made me laugh and it made me cry. Max is a very appealing character and the whole concept of time travel as a metaphor for Alzheimer’s was brilliant.” – Virginia Van Vliet, Toronto

“We live Max’s life through his unsteady relationship with time and memory. Along the way we discover Max also has an unsteady relationship with the status quo, leading him, naturally, into journalism. When Max isn’t afflicting the comfortable, he’s moving through time hoping to reunite with his muse. It’s a very sweet love story and a funny poke in the eye to puffery and counterproductive social norms.” – Jamie Hutt, Minneapolis, MN

“… a brilliant, beautiful book. I love the way it handles Max’s memory as a kind of three-dimensional chess board — supplying structure to the book, too — giving him a way to keep searching for his late wife in time while moving the plot along gently. And of course, the love letter to the Halifax Daily News implicit throughout is more valuable than any history of it. Bravo!” – Doug MacKay, Toronto

” … an intelligent, tender, funny, and layered novel about a ‘sorta ordinary’ fellow and his life and his love and his death. I was entirely engaged with Max’s history, his nursing home existence and his search for ‘the Wife’. I loved the style; clean and clever with notes of poetry and wisdom. And the ending worked!” – Janet Turpin Myers, Burlington, ON.

“In Max’s Folly, Bill Turpin leads us on a rollicking rollercoaster ride through Max’s non-linear “time-space continuum” as he pieces together the memories of a fully lived life now slipping away from him. The mood careens from laugh-out-loud funny, to bitingly satirical, to poignant, to moving — and back again. Max encounters — among others — a Canadian-accented Latin American mercenary, an ass-covering archbishop, a Montreal stripper-turned-real-estate mogul and a tabloid newspaper filled with so many surreal characters they could only have come out of real-life central casting. A marvelous debut novel from a major new talent.” – Stephen Kimber, Halifax

“Bill Turpin’s novel paints an amusingly accurate portrait of journalism. One where the biggest conflict zone isn’t in another country, it is in the newsroom itself.” – Michael de Adder, Halifax

“An astounding book. It contains lovely philosophical and spiritual musings. It carries on bravely in the tradition of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Mordecai Richler and a whole host of others. It may wind up being recognized as The Great Halifax Novel. Although the disclaimer at the beginning says it is a work of fiction, I don’t believe it for a second. I swear I have run into half the people who populate this wild adventure in the course of my own life. They are very real and oh so human.” – James Pogue, Stouffville, ON